It Only Takes A Moment

Is the notion of love at first sight a myth? Yes. It is, and that is to say it’s more deeply real and essentially true than we may ever fully understand. It may take time to get to know someone, learn their language patterns, their preferences and their story. But the heart knows. And so does the mind. I’m not talking brain here, but MIND, in all its vastness and glory. We just know.

Myths are metaphors and so they are not to be taken as literal, concrete truth in which we measure things: possessions, accomplishments and outcomes, but as pointers to heart/mind truth, in which we appreciate learnings: expanding wisdom, compassion, love and joy.

In human life, we do not occupy the myth, but we can apply it. In real life, there is laundry and there are opportunities to meet ourselves in the mirror of the “other” and learn ever more to allow and accept and be. Our relationships offer us opportunities to greet the Beloved. When we support the unfolding potential of “other,” we support our own soul growth. When we allow them to love us, we shrink our pain-body and expand into the fullness of our dharma.

Sometimes the in dance of soul growth, we may partner for, as the saying goes, “a reason, a season or a lifetime.” It is only in concrete thinking terms, when we measure in possessions that we may have judgment about this. In heart/mind terms, every relationship is sacred. How do we know when a “chance” meeting is cosmically designed encounter that we will want to say “yes” to and perhaps even “I do”?

When we talk of past and future lives, we are using metaphors to process concepts that are larger than concrete thinking can contain. These very terms are stuck in the concept of time as horizontal “housing” of time, rather than the vertical simultaneous time posited by quantum physicists and mystics. We use the metaphors of timeline to process experience and access its gifts.

Psychiatrist Brian Weiss recounts stories galore of meetings with lovers through past life regressions… Individuals who instantly recognized one another as former life partners and who became reunited couples in a flash.

“In a flash” is actually a phrase Joseph Campbell once used in a discussion with Bill Moyers about that special moment when you meet a truly significant “other.”

In another discussion on the same topic, Moyers asks Campbell what happens his was a question Bill Moyers asked about what is happening in this “flash” of inner knowing? Campbell, Myth Man himself, uses the metaphor not of the past, but of the future self.

MOYERS: But what happens to this self-discovery in love when you meet someone else, and you suddenly feel, “I know that person,” or “I want to know that person?”

CAMPBELL: That’s very mysterious. It’s almost as though the future life that you’re going to have with that person has already told you, “This is the one whom you will have that life with.”

MOYERS: Is that something coming from within our inventory of memories that we don’t understand and don’t recognize? Reaching out and being touched by that person in a way…

CAMPBELL: It’s almost as though you were reacting to the future. It’s talking to you from what is to be. This has to do with the mystery of time and the transcendence of time. But I think we’re touching a very deep mystery here.

May we embrace the mystery, trust the “flash” and celebrate That Love that weaves us together in the eternal now.